Ö PREFACE TO THE 



duction to more extended labours in the same direction ; — 

 labours whicli I had hoped to have seen entered upon by 

 others, whom this essay of mine might probably stimulate 

 to the undertaking. I believe that I have given only the 

 first rough outlines of a province of a great terra incognita 

 which lies unexplored before us, and the exploration of 

 which promises a return such as we can at present scarcely 

 appreciate. Several points of this continent have been 

 touched at by naturalists, who have there erected their 

 beacons usually without guessing that they were all in 

 the same region ; the recognition of these visited points, 

 the discovery of a few new ones, and the tracing out of 

 their connexion with the adjoining coast line, so that the 

 connected figure of the continent might be more authori- 

 tatively laid down, is all that my researches claim. From 

 the beacons erected by my predecessors, I have endea- 

 voured to make a survey of the surrounding country, as 

 far as it was possible for one to do so ; I have been 

 able to raise some of them to a greater height, in order 

 to take a more extended view from their summits ; and I 

 have wished to render the general impression of the pe- 

 culiar aspect of the continent derived from these isolated 

 views as correctly as my conception of it would allow, 

 being persuaded that by so doing I threw a clearer light, 

 by means of this general picture, on the separate views of 

 the landscape, and perhaps was thus afibrded the only 

 correct mode of viewing them. 



I am well aware that many naturalists would not have 

 ventured upon such general views, such generalizations as 

 they are termed, as I have indulged in, partly in the 

 Danish version of this essay, and partly in an earlier 

 small work in an entirely opposite direction, and for 

 which I have been exposed, on several sides, to objections 

 and blame, on account of the dangerous consequences of 

 such speculations, and the tendency they have to mislead 

 others. I am, however, of opinion, that it would be a 

 gain to science, and is imperative upon every one to take 

 a survey of the field from the eminence on which he has 



